AMBA & BGA GLOBAL CONFERENCE 2026
Malafronte found that the best student performers were those who interacted the most with the AI coach, at an average of 100 interactions, compared to 20 interactions among those who performed the least well. Malafronte highlighted that students’ success with the coach rested on their own ability to challenge their decision-making process and work with limited knowledge and differing personalities. In this, he argued, there is a clear misalignment with students’ experience of using ChatGPT, where they ask questions and simply receive an answer. “We need to adopt coaching as a pedagogy,” he argued. “When students understand the coaching scheme, they can leverage AI and use it in a different way to favour critical thinking.” Lessons from the science of learning Challenges and opportunities around the design of executive education programmes were the focus of an interactive session led by Andrea Montoliu, head of Spanish-speaking markets at Wooclap. Talking delegates through the science of learning, Montoliu outlined how retaining participants’ attention and providing them with lasting outcomes at the level of executive education requires a distinct approach. “Executive learners have a lot of pressure from work, established mental models and a measurable cost of every hour spent away from work,” she said, adding that “attention competes with active professional life in a way that initial students rarely face.” From a design perspective, she explained, this entails a shift in the pedagogical lever from one that revolves around activating motivation to one that channels it. “It’s using the participants’ experience as raw material for the programme and the design challenge becomes how to bring out and use that experience efficiently.” Montoliu drew on case studies from work with schools in France and Chile to illustrate how executive education learning can be enhanced. At the School of Management, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC), for example, executive programme participants are asked to complete “true or false?” questions and a cohort diversity survey at the start of class to highlight their professional background and expertise. At the end of each session, they are then asked to share their top takeaways and areas of doubt, a feature designed to help participants reorganise the content cognitively and strengthen the appropriate connections between neurons that turn momentary understanding into lasting knowledge.
“Resilience, humility, grit, levity, service and learning” – these are the six traits identified by McKinsey as being essential for 21st-century leaders and cited in the keynote presentation given by Belén Frau at the latest iteration of AMBA & BGA’s global conference. Global communications director at Ingka Group (IKEA) and a member of the advisory board at Deusto Business School, Frau began by referring to the current state of the world, where business school heads have to deal with technological acceleration, geopolitical volatility, trust deficit and the spread of disinformation. She suggested a ‘recipe’ comprised of eight ingredients to counteract these woes: purpose & vision; clear communication & decisions; coherent culture; emotional intelligence; radical simplicity; empowerment & trust; innovation with creativity & purpose; and adaptability & a growth mindset. The IKEA communications director cautioned that AI is making leadership more demanding: “The more powerful the tool, the more essential the human behind it. AI accelerates everything – including the consequences of poor leadership; technology amplifies what you already are, so if your culture is weak, AI scales weaknesses”. However, she pointed out that AI cannot replace ethical judgement, empathy and human connection, cultural coherence and the courage to decide under uncertainty. In the age of AI, “emotional intelligence is the differentiating skill; it represents self-awareness, empathy, social intelligence and emotional regulation”, noted Frau. Leaders with high EI generate a 20 per cent better team performance, according to the Harvard Business Review , while the Goleman/Hay Group reports that 85 per cent of outstanding leadership performance is attributed to EI versus IQ. She also spoke about the need to be aware of “the responsibility gap”: one of the findings of a recent DDI Global Leadership Forecast was that 89 per cent of managers believe they develop effective leaders, but only 24 per cent of employees agree. Frau told delegates that leadership today is “a blend of vision, humanity and courage”. She ended her session with a series of probing questions for school heads: “Are you building judgement, or just knowledge? Does your institution have active industry partnerships that shape your curriculum, not just endorse it? What ingredients of the recipe do you need to adjust today to prepare the leaders the world will need in 2035?” Championing a coaching pedagogy Cesim CEO Veijo Kyosti talked about the progress of its AI tool for instructors, two years on from its launch at AMBA & BGA’s global conference in Budapest. The company’s Tireless Teaching Assistant is designed to facilitate the integration of course content with Cesim’s business simulations. “It helps instructors analyse the results, find teachable moments and create strong learning experiences for the students,” Kyosti explained. The numbers taking advantage of this tool are on the rise, according to Kyosti, as is their level of engagement. Around 2,200 instructors have used it across more than 6,600 simulations in the two years, with the number of engaged instructor users rising from 493 to 1,036. In the same session, Université Côte d’Azur associate professor Olivier Malafronte discussed his research around students’ use of Cesim’s AI coaching tool within simulations. Across two cohorts,
Global communications director at Ingka Group (IKEA) Belén Frau highlighted the need to build judgement rather than just knowledge
Ambition • ISSUE 4 • 2026 19
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